friend-thru-the-storm

Liberal Paranoia in the Trump Age

Ever since Hillary lost the election, Democrats have been stoking the fires of fear, hatred and suspicion among their liberal voter base. This fear-mongering is an attempt to overcome the demoralization Democrats face after last November’s unexpected defeat. However, the anti-Trump propaganda campaign relies on a misguided demonization of Republicans as “fascists,” perpetrators of hate crimes and other atrocities. Because this narrative is essentially false, the Democrats are quite literally driving many of their supporters crazy, filling their minds with preposterous paranoid conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality.

Shortly after Election Day, someone vandalized an Episcopal church in the tiny crossroads hamlet of Beanblossom, Indiana, in rural Brown County, population 15,242, about an hour south of Indianapolis. The vandals painted “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church” on the church. Given the Episcopal denomination’s drift into liberalism, and the fact that Brown County went more than 2-to-1 for Trump (who got 63% of the county’s vote to Hillary’s 31%), this “Fag Church” attack seemed entirely plausible to liberals who claimed America was besieged by a wave of Trump-inspired hate crimes. “The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 867 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation in the United States in the 10 days after the November 8 election,” CNN reported at the time:

On Sunday morning, the Rev. Kelsey Hutto got the news that vandals had painted “Heil Trump,” an anti-gay slur and a swastika on the side of her church, Saint David’s Episcopal in Beanblossom, Indiana. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota . . . that she was at first sad, but believes that the church was targeted because it has always been inclusive to everyone. So, she said, she is taking comfort that whoever did this actually did this for the right reason, because the church has always been welcoming to everyone. “Doing the right thing is not always the popular thing.” . . . The Brown County Sheriff’s Department tells CNN it is investigating the incident. Investigators don’t currently have any suspects or leads, but they have shared their report with the state police department and are hoping someone in the community will come forward with information if they have it.

Stang told everyone he discovered the graffiti when he arrived for Sunday morning services. . . . According to court records, when confronted with the evidence, the 26-year-old gay man confessed. Investigators say Stang admitted to painting the “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church” graffiti himself because he wanted to “mobilize a movement after being disappointed in and fearful of the outcome of the national election.” He insisted his actions were not motivated by anti-Christian or anti-gay sentiments. . . . Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams talked about Stang’s alleged motive. “He explained that one of the reasons he had done it was because of fear. He was concerned about the results of the election,” Adams said. In a three-page, handwritten statement, Stang, according to court records, wanted to “mobilize a movement.” “I suppose I wanted to give local people a reason to fight for good, even if it was a false flag,” he wrote. “To be clear my actions were not motivated by hate for the church or its congregation. I of course realize now, this was NOT the way to go about inspiring activism.”

To give people “a reason to fight for good,” you try to “mobilize a movement” by perpetrating a crime you blame on your political opponents. Can you say “Reichstag fire,” boys and girls?

For all the talk of Trump being a neo-fascist, Democrats seem to be the ones resorting to Nazi-style propaganda tactics in America lately. The media are contributing to this paranoia, as even liberal Chris Cillizza laments in citing multiple recent examples in which “liberals, fueled by Twitter outrage, jumped to conclusions that portrayed Trump and other Republicans in the poorest possible light. And, on each occasion, the fuller story either totally or mostly rebutted the version of the story the left had seized on. . . . Democrats run the risk of appearing like the boy who cried wolf.” As Stephen Green comments at Instapundit, this “panic-mongering” is “about keeping the base riled up” until the next election.

The problem is that this requires constant hyping of anti-Republican paranoia and, as the case of the Beanblossom hate hoax shows, many Democrat voters are already so emotionally unstable as to be dangerous.